Criminal Justice, according to Legal Information Institute (2020), “is a generic term that refers to the laws, procedures, institutions, and policies at play before, during, and after the commission of a crime.” Legal Information Institute (2020), also states that “as a modern concept, criminal justice expresses two central ideas. The first is that criminals and victims of crime have certain rights, while the second is that criminal conduct should be prosecuted and punished by the state following set laws.” Cybercrime, also known as electronic crime according to CriminalJusticeDegreeHub.com (2022), encompasses many different types of illegal actions, but all cybercrimes utilize a computer, network, or the internet to do illegal activities. The overlap that occurs between criminal justice and cybercrime is that a crime is committed (Criminal Justice) and the medium the crime is committed through is via electronic means (Cybercrime). With the increase in technology availability and influence, the use of technology to commit crimes today is becoming more commonplace as opposed to the physical means of committing crimes in days past. For example, if two people were committing vehicle theft of two different cars, one with a brick through the car window and one hacking into the electronic system to unlock and autostart the vehicle, both thieves committed vehicle larceny, one physically and one via electronics, but the one that hacked the car electronically, not only stole from the person whose car they took, but they also gained unauthorized access to the intellectual property of that particular car manufacture and could face additional charges from them once caught. Most criminal justice laws are antiquated in terms of physical crimes and just add cybercrimes as an extension of current laws, but have yet to truly understand the emergence of cybercrime and its reach just not locally, but globally as well. This overlap relates to the other disciplines discussed in class because Criminal Justice is a social science discipline and cybercrime involves other disciplines like cybersecurity, psychology, sociology, and digital forensics to name a few. Because at the heart of cybercrime is human interaction of some sort, understanding human behavior, motivation, and cultural influences as it relates to technological use, involves an interdisciplinary approach.
Sources:
Legal Information Institute. (2020, June). Criminal justice. Legal Information Institute. Retrieved November 20, 2022, from https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/criminal_justice
What is cybercrime? Criminal Justice Degree Hub. (2022, March 12). Retrieved November 20, 2022, from https://www.criminaljusticedegreehub.com/what-is-cybercrime/